Shore Lore: Fire and brimstone on the Cape

Friday

Between 1838 and 1863, thousands of worshippers flocked to the bay shore of Eastham to partake in the Methodist camp meetings at Millennium Grove.

As Henry David Thoreau noted in 1855, “There are sometimes 150 ministers, and 5,000 hearers, assembled.”

Without question, the biggest draw among the preachers was none other than the Rev. Edward T. Taylor, better known as “Father Taylor.”

According to historian Donald Trayser, Taylor once said that “if I could choose my place in which to die, it would be right here (in Millennium Grove) for it would be such a little way to go to be in heaven.”

Taylor’s delivery was of the fire and brimstone variety. He was said to be the model for the “Father Mapple” character in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman were among his great admirers.

“Filled with the zeal of the Lord, he was always sure of himself,” wrote Gustavus Swift Paine in the Oct. 27, 1949 edition of The Cape Codder.

As a fellow preacher at the Eastham camp meeting noted, “the power with which (Taylor) conducts the baptismal service was sufficient to put to shame all the rituals of Christendom. His manner on that occasion was attended with storm and lightning, earthquake, and volcano.”

Born on Christmas Day in 1793, Taylor became a sailor at the age of 17 and was captured by the British during the War of 1812. “Soon after,” according to Paine, “he was ‘convicted,’ or converted, by the Methodists, and shortly emerged as a preacher.

In 1819, he and 36 others managed to survive a stormy packet voyage from Boston to Wellfleet for his first Cape camp meeting. In 1821 he was a circuit preacher at Sandwich and Harwich, and the next year at Harwich and Barnstable. “There he constantly insulted the Congregationalists and Unitarians,” Paine wrote.

In 1829, Taylor became the chaplain for the Seamen’s Bethel in North Square in Boston, erected in 1833 by the Port Society of Boston, a group formed by Methodists to further the moral and religious welfare of sailors.

According to Paine, on one cold day at the house of Prince Hinckley near the Nine-Mile Pond in Barnstable, “while the snow was still on the ground, some candidates were ready for baptism by immersion. Father Taylor, overhearing rude fellows speaking in an undertone of the cold bath, spoke out loudly:

“Brethren, if your hearts are warm, Snow and ice can do no harm.”

While Taylor had many enthusiastic followers, not everyone warmed up to his fiery oratory. During one Eastham meeting, Taylor took to the pulpit following a sermon by Rev. Enoch Pratt, and, as Paine noted, “proceeded to assail the teaching of Mr. Pratt, who stood by in such quiet dignity that the congregation resented Father Taylor’s interference.”

Another Eastham camp meeting saw a band singing the hymn, “We’ll feed on milk and honey,” into the late hours of the evening. Several worshippers sleeping in a nearby tent were not amused, and sent Father Taylor to quiet them. Instead, the Boston preacher joined the group himself and led the sing-a-along.

Taylor, who Paine noted “never loved any persons better than those with whom he had fierce contentions,” died in 1871, eight years after the camp meetings were moved to Yarmouth.

“Since everyone loves conflict and drama, those were the times when Cape Codders really had fun,” Paine concluded. “After Father Taylor’s death and the decline in camp meetings, the Cape was quieter until the summer people aroused it in other flamboyant ways.”

Don Wilding, a writer and public speaker on Cape Cod lore, can be reached via email at donwilding@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @WildingsCapeCod and on Facebook at @donwildingscapecod. Shore Lore appears weekly.